Gaza Christians: Muslims kidnap members to convert them

From Ma'an:

Christians in the Gaza Strip staged a sit-in protest on Monday against the abduction of a young man who his family says was being forced to convert to Islam by an armed group, Ma'an's correspondent said.

Dozens of Christians protested in the Orthodox church in Gaza City, claiming that a Christian man and two girls had been kidnapped.

Greek Orthodox Archbishop Alexios said a young man, Ramiz al-Amash, was kidnapped by an Islamist group on Saturday after attempts to force him to convert from Christianity to Islam.

He was prevented from calling his family.

"The young man's parents went to the police to lodge a complaint about the kidnapping of their son, but it did nothing," Archbishop Alexios said.

Al-Amash's mother became sick and had to be taken to hospital. The family managed to contact the kidnappers and they took Ramiz to see her surrounded by three jeeps filled with gunmen. They then took him away again to an unknown location.

He is most likely being held in al-Bureij or al-Maghazi refugee camp, Archbishop Alexios said.

"There are some groups trying to persuade young Christians to convert to Islam. They abduct them away from their parents and their families, they threaten them," he said.

Hamas government spokesman Ayman Batniji said there had been no kidnappings in Gaza, adding that police in the coastal enclave have the utmost respect for Christians.

AP reports it from the Muslims' perspective:

Dozens of Gaza Christians staged a rare public protest Monday, claiming two congregants were forcibly converted to Islam and were being held against their will.

The small but noisy demonstration showed the increasingly desperate situation facing the tiny minority.

Protesters banged on a church bell and chanted, "With our spirit, with our blood we will sacrifice ourselves for you, Jesus."

Gaza police say the two are staying with a Muslim religious official at their request, because they fear retribution from their families converting to Islam. Two mediators said the two -- a 25-year-old man and a woman with three children -- appeared to have embraced Islam of their free will. Forced conversions have been unheard of in Gaza before.

Since the Islamic militant Hamas seized power five years ago, Christians have felt increasingly embattled, but have mostly kept silent.

There are growing fears among Gaza Christians that their rapidly shrinking community could disappear through emigration and conversions.

Their numbers appear to have shrunk from some 3,500 to about 1,500 in recent years, according to community estimates. They are a tiny minority among 1.7 million Palestinians in Gaza, most conservative Muslims.

"If things remain like this, there'll be no Christians left in Gaza," said Huda Al-Amash, mother of one of the converts, Ramez, 25. She sat sobbing in a church hallway alongside her daughters, Ranin and Rinad, and a dozen other women. "Today it's Ramez. Then who, and who will be next?"

Changing faith is a deeply traumatic affair in the Arab world, where religion is strongly interwoven with people's identities and tribal membership. To convert often means to be ostracized by the community.

The two converts, Al-Amash, and Hiba Abu Dawoud, 31, could not be reached for comment. Abu Dawould took her three daughters with her, further enraging the community.

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Iranian official accuses West of controlling the weather

From AFP:

The drought in southern Iran is part of a “soft war” launched against the Islamic republic by the West, the Fars news agency quoted an Iranian vice president as saying on Monday.

“I am suspicious about the drought in the southern part of the country,” Hassan Mousavi, who also heads Iran’s cultural heritage and tourism organization, said at a ceremony to introduce the nation’s new chief of meteorological department.

“The world arrogance and colonist (term used by Iranian authorities to label the West) are influencing Iran’s climate conditions using technology... The drought is an acute issue and soft war is completely evident... This level of drought is not normal.”
Iran has experienced several droughts in recent years, especially in the south where it was hit in recent weeks by violent sand storms that engulfed several cities.

Sand storms particularly enter Iran from neighboring Iraq where desertification has increased over the last two decades due to wars.

Last year, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad accused Western countries of devising plans to “cause drought” in Iran, adding that “European countries are using special equipment to force clouds to dump” their water on their continent.

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Munich widow: IOC head said Arab/Muslim nations stopping minute of silence

From the European Jewish Press:

As London's Organising Committee of the Olympic Games prepares for the start of this summer’s games, the international furore over the continued refusal to hold an official commemoration for the victims of the Munich Massacre fails to die down, as the widow of the one of the slain athletes brands the International Olympic Committee (IOC) as “corrupt.”

The organisation and its president Jacques Rogge have been subject to intense criticism from across the international community for its continued refusal to honour the 11 Israel Olympians murdered at the 1972 Munich Games with a minute’s silence to mark the 40th anniversary of the killings, in what has been presented as a “humanitarian” gesture.

Munich widow Ankie Spitzer spearheaded the campaign by launching an online protest, which has since garnered support from across political spectrums in several countries including Israel, Canada, the UK, Australia, the US, Belgium and Germany.

In the latest development, some 140 Italian parliamentarians signed a letter to Rogge this week, calling for minute’s silence to be instituted.

The appeal was driven by Italian Jewish MP Fianna Nirenstein, who is vice president of the parliamentary commission on foreign affairs, and who said the gesture would mark “a moment of pity for these murdered athletes and a firm condemnation of terror”.

Although IOC officials have on many occasions attended private memorials to the slain Olympians held in cities hosting the Games throughout the years, they have not staged a minute’s silence in the 40 years since the tragedy.

In a letter launching her campaign for an official silence to mark the 40th anniversary of the Munich Massacres, Spitzer wrote:

“Silence is a fitting tribute for athletes who lost their lives on the Olympic stage. Silence contains no statements, assumptions or beliefs and requires no understanding of language to interpret.”

Rogge’s succinct response declared that "within the Olympic family, the memory of the victims of the terrible massacre in Munich in 1972 will never fade away."

The Israeli foreign ministry insinuated a political dimension to the IOC’s refusal, when it responded that “perhaps the IOC thinks anything to do with Israel is controversial. It is not a display of great courage and integrity.”

Spitzer declared the IOC’s continued refusal is evidence of it being “a corrupt organisation, led by greed rather than the Olympic spirit”, adding that “the IOC’s refusal is pure discrimination – greed and anti-Semitism”.

Citing the increasing funding the organisation relies on from oil-rich gulf states, Spitzer claims that Rogge protested his inability to act earlier this year when the two met to discuss her appeals, saying his hands were tied by admission of 46 Arab and Muslim members to the IOC. “No,” Spitzer claims she responded, “my husband’s hands were tied, not yours.”

There was a brief and much criticized ceremony immediately after the massacre in 1972, where the head of the IOC at the time compared the slaughter to the movement to stop Rhodesia from participating in the games.

The Vancouver Sun recalls what happened:

A memorial service was held the day after the murders, but it was more farce than memorial. When the flags of all the competing nations were lowered to half-mast, 10 Arab nations were so incensed that they had them raised as soon as the ceremony was over.

A book about the 1972 Olympics notes:

Arab teams boycotted the service, remaining in the Olympic Village, and officials from the Lebanese team told journalists, "We did not go to the stadium, We are confined to our quarters by our chief of mission." The response from the Saudi team was more outrageous: "What service? What shootings?"

(h/t Ishai)

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The mainstreaming of anti-semitism: Salon partners with Mondoweiss

Mondoweiss is not simply a far leftist site. It is not simply a hate site. Mondweiss is a virulent pusher of anti-semitic tropes.

In a guest post written two years ago, Adam Levick exposed some of Mondoweiss' hate (see link for sources of footnotes)

Nazi, Soviet, and, more recently, Arab anti-Semitic caricatures often portray Jews as spiders, cockroaches, and Octopuses – dehumanizing Jews by turning them into animals that are destructive, inhuman and evil. The cartoon below, by the notorious anti-Zionist cartoonist, Carlos Latuff, was posted on the “progressive” Jewish anti-Zionist blog, Mondoweiss recently[ii] – by a frequent Mondoweiss blogger named Seham[iii] – in reference to the Gaza flotilla incident.

This ugly caricature of the Jewish state manages to both employ Nazi-like anti-Semitic imagery of a beastly and monstrous Jewish collective while simultaneously asserting that the Jewish state has become the new Nazi Germany. (Note the Jewish Magen David on the Israeli flag is morphed into a swastika) Such insidious depictions of Israel and Israelis are mostly seen on extremist websites, and is a phenomenon known as Holocaust inversion[iv].

...That such a cartoon would appear on the pages of Mondoweiss[xvi], funded by The Nation Institute,[xvii]is, sadly, not particularly surprising to anyone familiar with the blog. Mondoweiss is an openly anti-Zionist Jewish blog and consistently advances, among other classical antisemitic tropes,[xviii] the argument that Jews exercise too much power over U.S. policy[xix] [xx]and that Jewish “progressive” voices on the Middle East are censored by the organized Jewish community. The viciousness and hatred towards Israel, and the state’s Jewish supporters, can’t be overstated. The main blogger, Philip Weiss, states that “Zionism privileges Jews and justifies oppression, and this appals me.” Weiss has complained that the “suffering of Palestinians that has been perpetrated politically in large part by empowered American Jews who are all over the media and political establishment.” He has openly called for a quota on Jews who work in the media. Weiss refers to Zionism as an ideology of “apartheid and ethnic cleansing.”

Read the whole thing.

Yaacov Lozowick, historian and now head of Israel's State Archives, is not known to use hyperbole. But here is how he describes Mondoweiss:

You recognize the old-fashioned antisemitic trope about the Jews who pull the strings behind the facade which hides reality. Even as I write this Weiss has posted about the 35-year friendship between Mitt Romney and Binyamin Netanyahu; I don't see how his piece can be read except as part of a conspiracy theory. Truly frightening, those Zionists, surrounding a future potential American president with their agents when he was only in his 20s.

Being against the existence of Israel isn't particularly exceptional. One of the interesting things about Mondoweiss is the tremendous amount of work they invest in their animosity. I happen to think the Saudi regime is ghastly, but I'd never spend hours every day digging up dirt on it. The Mondoweiss people do that, first by avidly seeking any remotely negative story about Israel, then by seeking the ones which aren't true, then by damning anyone who casts doubt with terms such as hasbarists, Ziobots (I assume these are part Zionists and part robots), and of course genocidists. In order to collect all that dirt they've got to pass by the occasional positive story too, but these never get linked to or even alluded too unless to demonstrate how yet another journalist has succumbed to the threat of Zionist censorship. The result is a depiction of reality which has at best a glancing relationship with the real world, but these folks aren't interested in the real world. In their world, Zionists are easily the worst group of humans, they purportedly hate all Palestinians, they enforce the most cruel policies possibly on them, they steal from-, degrade and kill Palestinians, on a daily basis. You read Mondoweiss regularly and the force of hatred towards Zionists becomes overpowering: no normal decent person could have anything but the deepest contempt for such a gang of deceitful violent criminals. As a commentor named "American" recently wrote:

The thing about the zionist is they attack even those who help them. They turned on England, calling it “worse than Hitler’ because England tried to uphold the immigration quotas agreed to. They demonize the UN that created their state for them....Everyone, without exception, who has ever had anything to do them has regretted it….the US will too in the end. They are vipers who need to be decapitated.

Comments at Mondoweiss are moderated, so that one could have been deleted - but wasn't. And why would it be? It merely states what is obvious to the locals. Any attempt to argue with them will either be blocked by the same moderators, or dederisively laughed off the screen. If a sane commenter has made a reasonable point which gets past the moderators, the locals will dig up a dozen spurious links to disprove it: the value of links being not their veracity, or the trustworthiness of their sources, but their usefulness to the partly line. Links which are not useful - you guessed it: they're written off as hasbara lies.

Interestingly, the Mondoweiss community not only has no interest in the lives of real Israelis, it also has no interest in the lives of real Palestinians. Their point is to hate Israel and damn it, no matter what; the possibility that there are Palestinians who live alongside Israelis, interact with them, and even could imagine living with them in peace, is a thought never contemplated. I have Palestinian staff members, colleagues and friends; none of them could remotely fit into the Mondoweiss world. The mothodology also has the odd result that according to Mondoweiss, Israelis and Palestinians are all boring cardboard figures, with none of the complexities, complications, shades of grey, frustrations and successes of real people. The very parts of the human story which make it worth following are all dropped, to be replaced by detestation (towards Israelis) and patronizing pity (towards Palestinians).

Only this week, we have this description in The Atlantic:

It's impossible to peer into the hearts and minds of the people who edit the site, but Mondoweiss often gives the appearance of an anti-Semitic enterprise. Site founder and editor Phil Weiss, a former writer for the American Conservative when Pat Buchanan was editor, wrote this past May, "I can justly be accused of being a conspiracy theorist because I believe in the Israel lobby theory ... certainly my theory has an explanation of the rise and influence of the neocons. They don't have a class interest but an ideological-religious one."

An April 2011 article on the site strongly implied that Mossad agents were involved in the murder of Italian activist Vittorio Arrigonni, an assertion for which there's no factual evidence. In 2011, contributor Max Ajl argued against "left-wing" condemnation of the Itamar massacre, in which attackers killed five members of a settler family, including a three-month old baby. In 2009, Jack Ross, who has contributed to the white nationalist, Holocaust-denying journal The Barnes Review,argued on Mondoweiss that "it was not the appeasement, but the internationalist hubris and bellicosity of Chamberlain which started World War II." In other words, lay off the Nazis.

"Iran has never officially denied the Holocaust," Mondowess claimed in April of this year. This statement might be technically true, but it is functionally false. It also reflects a troublingly dismissive attitude towards Holocaust denial on the part of high-ranking Iranian officials.

One winner of Mondoweiss' recent "New Yorker parody contest" was a bizarre entry in which former Israeli Prime Minister has a teary reunion with the ghost of his long-lost father: Adolf Hitler.

Philip Weiss has found evidence of Jewish influence and Jewish perfidy in everything from NPR to the names of the buildings at Harvard University to an innocuous statement by Rabbi Shmuley Boteach. Weiss has argued that the "Jewish presence in the Establishment" imposes its own single-minded, communalistic interests upon the whole of American and British society. "Don't you see," he wrote in a post also suggesting "Zionists" were to blame for the outbreak of the Iraq war, "the vociferousness and effectiveness of the Israel lobby make this conflict Our Conflict!" Ironically, Weiss also believes that Zionism entails Jewish self-hatred.

Even Hussein Ibish, hardly someone I agree with often, tweeted today that Mondoweiss was "moronic and repulsive," pointing to one egregious example.

One would think that any mainstream website would think twice before openly associating themselves with what is, effectively, a hate site.

Yet that is exactly what Salon did today:

Salon is proud to feature content from Mondoweiss, a news website devoted to covering American foreign policy in the Middle East, and the evolving debate over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

This is beyond troublesome. This is the mainstreaming of Jewish anti-semitism.

Salon is one of the biggest mainstream webzines. It is outrageous that Salon is not being slammed by its own readers and supporters to immediately reverse this sickening decision.

If there is anything funny about this - and this is not funny - it is that Salon's embrace of Mondoweiss directly disproves Mondoweiss' own major theme that Zionist Jews do not allow any divergent opinions to be heard in the US.

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The fake child artists of Gaza, redux

Last September I posted about the fake child artists of Gaza, where an "art exhibit" of drawings purportedly by Gaza kids is shown to almost certainly be drawn by adults in a faux-children's style.

So it isn't art - it is slander.

I just wrote an update to the post for The Algemeiner, as the exhibit has been going across the US and Canada and is now in Toronto. I include a couple of new things like the excuse they use for the kids not signing the pictures and the fact that there is now a book about the fake drawings, where Israel haters are making money off this deception.

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Monday Links by Ian

Israel Preparing for al-Qaeda on its Borders by Yaakov Lappin

“Hamas, for its part, has no problem with al-Qaeda launching attacks on Israel from Sinai, but it does have a problem with al-Qaeda challenging its rule in Gaza. In 2009, Hamas ruthlessly enforced its jurisdiction in Gaza, sending hundreds of gunmen to the south of the Strip to put down an al-Qaeda inspired movement that challenged Hamas rule .”

How Political Correctness Is Transforming British Education by Soeren Kern

“British schools are increasingly dropping the Jewish Holocaust from history lessons to avoid offending Muslim pupils, according to a report entitled, Teaching Emotive and Controversial History, commissioned by the Department for Education and Skills.
British teachers are also reluctant to discuss the medieval Crusades, in which Christians fought Muslim armies for control of Jerusalem: lessons often contradict what is taught in local mosques.”

(see comments, the linked report in the article mentioned only one history department that avoided Holocaust education in 2007 - EoZ)  

Egypt's Power Struggle and the Fate of Christians by Aidan Clay

"Egypt's Coptic Christian minority fears that the restoration of parliament, which will grant greater power to Islamists, will be used to institute Sharia law and stifle religious freedom."

Christians snub Cairo meeting with Clinton, claim US backs Islamists
Monica chants taunt Clinton in Egypt

Obama Advisor Visited Israel 'to Stop Iran Attack'

“President Barack Obama's National Security Advisor Tom Donilon visited Israel secretly over the weekend in what one Israeli newspaper says was an attempt to convince Israel not to attack Iran's nuclear facilities.”

Wasserman Schultz, despite objections, to speak at suburban Philly synagogue

“Similar event in Miami was canceled a month ago over concerns of political evenhandedness “

Debbie Wasserman Schultz Cannot Name a Reason for Jews to Back Obama Except Abortion

CIFWatch A Guardian-Baathist Alliance? Syrian gov’t uses CiF essay for pro-regime propaganda

Saudi Arabia considers law against insulting Islam

It was all destiny

“One of last surviving founders of IAF recalls mission that stopped Egypt from advancing on Tel Aviv.”
"It was 4 p.m. and a jeep rushes in with Shimon Avidan, commander of the Givati Brigade,”
Lenart said. “He heard we had airplanes and said that six miles from where we were near Ashdod, there were 15,000 Egyptian soldiers and 500 vehicles and tanks stopped because Givati had blown up a bridge. But if we didn’t stop them that night they would fix the bridge and be in Tel Aviv the next morning – and there would be no Israel.”

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Journalist imprisoned, tortured by Hamas. Yawn.

Palestine Press reports about Mohamed Nimer Guenith , a freelance journalist in Gaza, who was abducted, imprisoned and tortured by Hamas.

According to Guenith, ge was arrested on June 10 after his home was raided and his computer confiscated. He was asked about articles he had written that were critical of Hamas (specifically about the fuel shortage,) as well as for details on who his journalist friends were. He was beaten, punched and slapped, and forced to sleep on the ground.

The next day, were subjected to investigate again and asked him about those critical of Hamas, and raises the issue of lack of fuel in the Gaza Strip, next to the same questions about his friends in the journalists 'union and his friends journalists in Egypt, and journalists who work for the Fatah movement, and during his interrogation was colleague, the journalist was beaten with' punched and slapped, forced to the wall strongly ', was detained for 12 days in a cell about a meter and a half, including a toilet, sleeps on the ground in some nights.

The interrogators asked him if he was biased against Hamas because they killed his brother. They beat his feet and shaved his head, and accused him of being a Fatah journalist who is undermining the unity between Hamas and Fatah, a charge he denied.

After 15 days he was released. He then made a statement that it is clear that there is a systematic policy practiced by Hamas in the Gaza Strip with the aim of gagging the media by subjecting journalists to arrest, torture and detention in harsh conditions.

As far as I can tell, the UN Human Rights Council didn't bring up the issue of Hamas repression of freedoms when they visited Gaza this weekend. Perhaps it is outside of the UNHRC's mission statement to accuse anyone besides Israel of abuses.

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Iranian press says Israel will attack - America

One of the Western conspiracy theorists who has found a comforting home in Iranian media is Gordon Duff, who usually hangs out at that anti-semitic nutcase site Veterans Today.

Last week he posted a classic on Iran's PressTV:

The most likely scenario, should the Likudists in Israel find their stranglehold on that country, one held through propagandization, pouring millions into the American electoral system, much of it proceeds from drug sales, human trafficking and other areas of organized crime, some of it even America’s own foreign aid to Israel, used for “pump priming,” Israel is likely to try to precipitate a war on Iran by staging an attack on the US, its forces in the Persian Gulf region or on a European NATO target, most likely the London Olympic games.

There has been highly credible information that an attack on the Olympics is planned.

Additionally, Dolphin submarines supplied to Israel by Germany have now been proven to have been specially modified to launch Cruise type and surface to air missiles.

This would allow Israel to attack American ships in the Persian Gulf, stage a nuclear attack on the London Olympics or shoot down commercial aircraft while blaming Iran.

Their powerful lobby in the US would back them up, their control of the press through much of the world would immediately blame Iran and any potential investigation would be rigged beforehand.

A critical component of the success of such an operation is that “highly informed sources” that might speak openly, would be threatened with any number of fates from immediate firing to the “accidental death” of their children.

In fact, we actually have statements from “highly informed sources” that this has happened before, more than once, in the US, United Kingdom and elsewhere in Europe.

See how we Zionists think everything through?

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Lebanese graduate from Technion accused of "collaboration"

At the very same time that graduates from American University of Lebanon were heckling an American honoree for supporting Israel's existence, a Lebanese Arab woman was honored - as the valedictorian at Israel's Technion!

From the Times of Israel, June 6:

The daughter of the man who founded a mini-army in southern Lebanon graduated on Wednesday from a prestigious Israeli university with a master’s degree in aeronautics, having developed a rocket engine that enables speedier and longer-range missile fire.

Arza Haddad, 31, is the daughter of the late Saad Haddad, an officer who split away from the Lebanon Army in 1976 with his unit to create what became the South Lebanon Army, the Maariv daily reported. Haddad allied himself with Israel to fight guerrilla and terror groups and protect the Christian community in South Lebanon, including in the First Lebanon War, whose 30th anniversary falls this week.

After Haddad’s death in 1984, Arza completed high school and then fled to Israel. On Wednesday, she graduated with a master’s degree in Aeronautics from the Technion in Haifa, having worked in research on Ramjet missile engines. The rocket she worked on, she said, “can travel 1,000 kilometers, relatively rapidly.”

The valedictorian at the graduation ceremony, she told Maariv she had not yet decided whether to mention her father in her speech, as “some people remember him well and some don’t.”

She said she herself does not remember her father well as he died of an illness when she was three years old, but that his competitiveness and perseverance were passed on to his family members. She said she had no plans to return to Lebanon. “My whole adult life is here. Israel is my home.”

The story was quickly picked up by Lebanese media.

And then they feverishly claimed that her rocket designs are meant to be used by Israel against Lebanon. 

So, naturally, this was inevitable:

Military Prosecutor Judge Saqr Saqr charged Monday the daughter of the disbanded South Lebanon Army of collaborating with the Jewish State.

Arza Saad Haddad, a Lebanese with an Israeli nationality, is the daughter of Saad Haddad, founder of the Lebanese militia which fought alongside Israel during its occupation of south Lebanon 1982 to 2000.

Based on articles 285 and 278 of the Penal Code, Sakr accused Haddad of collaborating with Israel and entering the Jewish state. The case has been transferred to an investigative judge.

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Gaza gets visitors from Yemen and the UNHRC

From the Al Qassam Brigades website:

Gaza premier Ismail Haneyya has affirmed that the Israeli occupation was fading and its strategy in Gaza had failed.

Haneyya, speaking to a visiting Yemeni popular delegation on Sunday, said that the Palestinian people are more determined than ever before to restore their land and to return the refugees to their homeland.

He said that Israel would not be able to occupy more land but would rather decline to its fateful end, asserting that there is no future for occupation on the land of Palestine.

The premier hailed the Yemeni delegation, saying that its visit proved that the Palestinian people were not alone in the field of confrontation and against siege.

The chief Yemeni delegation, for his part, affirmed his country would not be preoccupied with its own issues away from Palestine and would continue to support the Palestinian cause.

It is fairly clear from this article that Hamas defines "occupation" as "all of Israel."

But note how the Yemen delegation, coming from a country that is fighting for its life against Al Qaeda and that faces a huge humanitarian crisis as hundreds of thousands of kids are literally starving to death, still says that helping Hamas terror groups is a priority for them.

Because what's more important - helping starving kids in their own country or helping these "starving" Gazans at the beach?

But these weren't the only visitors to Gaza yesterday.

The magnificent organization, the UN, sent representatives from its "Human Rights Council" to Gaza:

A delegation from the United Nations Human Rights Commissioner's office arrived in the Gaza Strip on Saturday evening via Egypt's Rafah crossing, Egyptian media said.

The 11-member delegation will discuss Israel’s violations of human rights in the coastal enclave, according to Egypt's Middle East News Agency.

There is no shortage of people in Gaza eager to testify about Israel to the UN - yesterday, the Al Mezan Center spent hours detailing hundreds of supposed Israeli crimes - but you won't find anyone willing to say a word against the terrorist government that actually occupies Gaza.

The UNHRC didn't send any delegations to Jordan, or Egypt, or Lebanon, and certainly not to Syria.

Because, for both delegations, blaming Israel for all the world's problems is a hell of a lot easier than actually trying to solve them.

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"Summer brides" in Egypt; human trafficking in Iran

From Al Arabiya:

Wealthy Arab tourists from Gulf countries are paying money to purchase under-age Egyptian girls as “summer-brides”, claims a new report on human trafficking released by the U.S. State Department.

The marriages are not legally binding and end when the men return to their home countries.

According to the report “Trafficking in Persons”, often times these temporary marriages are facilitated by the girls’ parents who profit from the transaction.
According to Britain’s The Daily Mail, the wealthy tourists pay an amount to poor families through intermediaries, ranging from anywhere between $495 and $4,950.The young victims, some under the age of 18, are then forced to serve as sex slaves as well as servants to their “husbands.”

Egypt has laws in place that aim to combat human trafficking which prevent foreigners from marrying an Egyptian woman if there is more than ten years age difference, but marriage brokers have found a way around that by forging birth certificates to make the girls appear older and the men younger.

These contracts also eliminate any potential problems with hotels and land lords who may demand to see proof of marriage before allowing a couple to stay in a room together, since pre-marital sex is prohibited in Islam.

In many cases, the family agrees to marry their daughter without her consent, but often the girls are willing participants as they see it as the only way to help provide for their families.

In some cases the men take the Egyptian girls back to their home country to work as maids for their first wives. But even the girls who stay in Egypt do not fare much better since they often become ostracized by society and find it difficult to re-marry in the traditional way, particularly if the “summer marriage” resulted in a child.

Many of the young women end up in a cycle of temporary marriages with Gulf tourists, and others are targeted by Egyptian men who marry them in order to force them into prostitution.

Many abandon the child out of shame, either to orphanages or leaving them to join the hundreds of thousands of street children that already exist in Egypt.

But Egypt isn't nearly as bad off as Iran is in this State Department report.

Iran is a source, transit, and destination country for men, women, and children subjected to sex trafficking and forced labor. Iranian and Afghan boys and girls residing in Iran are forced into prostitution within the country. Iranian women, boys, and girls, are subjected to sex trafficking in Iran, as well as in Pakistan, the Persian Gulf, and Europe. Azerbaijani women and children are also subjected to sex trafficking in Iran.

Afghan migrants and refugees are subjected to forced labor in Iran. Men and women from Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Iraq migrate voluntarily to Iran, or through Iran, to other Gulf states, particularly the UAE, and Europe, seeking employment. Some are subsequently subjected to conditions of forced labor, including debt bondage, through the use of such practices as restriction of movement, nonpayment of wages, and physical or sexual abuse. NGO reports indicate criminal organizations, sometimes politically connected, play a significant role in human trafficking to and from Iran, particularly across the borders with Afghanistan and Pakistan in connection with the
smuggling of migrants, drugs, and arms. Unconfirmed reports indicate that religious leaders and immigration officials are involved in human trafficking.

The Government of Iran does not comply with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking, and is not making significant efforts to do so. The government did not share information on its anti-trafficking efforts with the international community during the reporting period; this impedes the collection of information on the country’s human trafficking problem and the government’s efforts to curb it. Publicly available information from NGOs, the press, international organizations, and other governments nonetheless indicate that the Iranian government is not taking sufficient steps to address its extensive trafficking challenges. For these reasons, Iran is placed on Tier 3 for a seventh consecutive year.

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Iran shuts down coffee shops for being "immoral"

From Reuters:

Iranian police shut down dozens of restaurants and coffee shops over the weekend, Iranian media reported, in a renewed crackdown on what the state sees as immoral and un-Islamic behavior.

Regular officers and members of the "morality police" raided 87 cafes and restaurants in a single district of the capital Tehran on Saturday and arrested women for flouting the Islamic dress code, according to the Iranian Students' News Agency.

"These places were shut for not following Islamic values, providing hookah to women, and lacking proper licenses," said Tehran police official Alireza Mehrabi, according to ISNA. Women are not allowed to smoke hookah, water pipes, in public.

Mehrabi said the raid came as part of a plan to provide "neighborhood-oriented" security, and would continue in other parts of Tehran.

Coffee shop culture has flourished in Iran in recent years, offering wireless Internet, snacks, hot drinks, and a place to hang out for Iranian youth in a country where there are no bars or Western chain restaurants or cafes.

Ah, human rights.

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Sunday links

From Ian:

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Latma summer shorts: The peacenik boss's amazing admission


New York Post Editorial: Israel on the outs — again

“Once again, Israel was excluded from one of Team Obama’s pet projects — the Global Counter-Terrorism Forum, a group of 29 nations that met this week in Spain.
Israel was not only not invited — Turkey objected — it also was completely ignored.”

Israel considering sanctions against UN agency for illegal activity in Judea and Samaria

“Israel is considering sanctions against the United Nations Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs due to illegal activities in Judea and Samaria. Specifically, the office stands accused of performing illegal construction activity in the region.”

B’nai Brith slams UNESCO affiliation with Gaza University

“To so strongly associate an organization meant to promote peaceful goals with a terrorist organization is yet another contributor to the world body’s tarnished reputation in the international community,” B’nai B’rith International President Allan J. Jacobs said.
“Establishing this special UNESCO scientific chair in effect legitimates an anti-Semitic
institution so closely associated with a terrorist organization. This decision flies in the face of rational thought, and once again gravely politicizes an agency that should be dealing with education, science and culture,” added B’nai B’rith International Executive Vice President Daniel S. Mariaschin.

China, Cuba Block U.N Human Rights Council from Condemning Syria

The BBC’s talent for misrepresenting Mizrahim

“To read this article you would never guess why hordes of Mizrahim would willingly choose to put themselves through the mill of cultural oppression that is Israel. But the truth is that such obstacles as they encountered were a walk in the park compared to the persecutions and pogroms they had endured in their countries of birth. There, discrimination was enshrined in law. But you will never learn such inconvenient truths from the BBC or from the lips of Rachel Shabi, whose goals are to whitewash Arab anti-Semitism in order to attack Israel’s “Ashkenazi” elite as European colonialists. They maintain that the Mizrahim simply “arrived” in Israel from countries like Morocco, Tunisia, Iraq, Yemen and Iran in the years following its establishment — like aliens from the planet Zog.”

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Israel is more like Australia than you probably realise. In both countries cricket matches will only be halted by bushfires, if the field starts to burn.
Australia: Out in a blaze of glory: a bushfire fails to stop cricketers at Abernethy in 2003.
Israel: Smoke blows toward the pitch at Lod, shortly before play was suspended on Friday. 2012
From: Flames interrupt already hot Israeli cricket
White smoke from blaze forces a temporary halt to game between Lod and Ra’anana.

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Onco-washing

From COGAT:

In the [IDF] Civil Administration they were hard at work in the last few weeks, preparing a special summer camp for cancer-stricken children from Judea & Samaria and from Gaza. 24 Palestinian children along with their parents departed, from Monday, July 2nd until Thursday, July 5th, for four days of fun in the Jordan Park, financed by the Civil Administration. These included horse riding, activities on inflated contraptions, music workshop and various other attractions.

The Jordan Park contains a combination of tourist, recreation and archeological facilities. The park, which extends over an area of about 1000 dunam, belongs to the Jewish National Fund and is administered by the Economic Association for Golan Settlements. The Health Coordinator in Judea & Samaria, Mrs. Dalia Basa, coordinated the children’s visit with the park management after having verified that the facilities in the park and the basic medical services exist and are adapted to the children’s special needs.

“We were happy to see how the children forgot, even if for a short time, the disease and connected to the summer camp experience during their summer vacation, just like all children throughout the world and in Israel.” summarized the Health Coordinator in Judea & Samaria, Mrs. Dalia Basa.

The civil Administration reported that different groups of Palestinian children and teenagers go out daily on excursions and visits of Israeli sites and that every year the wish increases to participate in summer camps, workshops, vacation days, etc., which combine visits in Israel and mainly organized excursions to the water sources in the North and in the Tel-Aviv area.

Obviously the IDF helps out cancer-stricken Palestinian Arab kids only to whitewash their crimes against, um, Palestinian Arab kids.

Only one problem: they do a really poor job publicizing it. Not a single story in any major Israeli newspaper about this. The only other places I saw it was the IDF website copying this article and a Christian organization.

So I guess that I am the main purveyor of Israel's evil onco-washing.

This joins Israel's evil pinkwashing, snow-washing, eye-washing, quake-washing, tech-washing, hunger-washing, med-washing, heart-washing, infection-washing, breast-washing, tumor-washing, germwashing, robot-washing....

All done, as any trendy Lefty knows, to cover up Israeli crimes.

Because that is the only way for tolerant über-Lefties and anti-Zionists to understand Israelis doing anything that is not a war crime.

(h/t Yerushalimey for robot-washing)

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A Cyprus thought experiment

From Israel HaYom:

Cypriot police are continuing to question a 24-year-old foreigner arrested last week for allegedly plotting an attack on Israeli tourists visiting the Mediterranean island, Cypriot media reported on Saturday.

The man, said to be a Swedish passport holder of Lebanese extraction, was arrested on July 7 and was detained following remand hearings held in camera, Sigma TV reported. He has not yet been charged with any offence.

Sigma TV's website reported the man had been tracking the movement of Israeli tourists on the island, while Cypriot newspaper Phileleftheros said he was attempting to pinpoint areas frequented by Israeli tourists and the buses they used.

A Cypriot government spokesperson confirmed the arrest of the Lebanese man, and according to media reports, the arrest took place after a "foreign intelligence agency" submitted information on the suspect to the authorities.

Police reportedly arrested the Lebanese man in his hotel room, where they also found photos and documents containing information on Israeli targets, including flight departure and arrival times for Israeli airlines. Sigma TV said the suspect arrived in Cyprus with the intention of carrying out a terror attack against an Israeli plane or tourist bus, and according to other reports, he spent time in the southern coastal city of Limassol where he photographed "Israeli targets."

Based on the suspect's Lebanese origin, it is increasingly believed that the man is a Hezbollah operative who was collecting information for a terror attack that was being planned by the Shiite group, seeking retaliation for the 2008 assassination of one of its senior leaders, Imad Mughniyeh, which they blame on Israel.

The Cyprus Mail notes:

The suspect arrived on the island almost two weeks ago.

Isn't it interesting that he arrived on the island so soon after Cypriot authorities allowed the Lebanese energy minister to expel an Israeli diplomat from a conference?

Is it possible that if the Cypriots had made a stand against the Lebanese bullying, that something like this wouldn't have happened?

Or would it have been more likely?

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